Ja, jetzt funktioniert das plötzlich - oh sorry, we decided to write in english...
Today I had the Idea, that "Rückkehr" has to to something with "jemanden den Rücken kehren", that means I don't want to bother with him/with it. I always thought, "Rückkehr" has a look forward. But it is something what is in your back, that is giving you the pulsion to go forward.
I want to contribute a very old picture of me, that might show, what I mean


This picture is called "Heraustretend", sort of "coming out of"
Another picture also of the year 1884 was the theme "Rückkehr", so looking at the difference:



Is there a difference?

greetings Tilman

Troya Ardiendo a sus espaldas

This was a theme i found in a book practicing spanish.
A sus espaldas means behind your back.
Troya ardiendo is Troy burning, after the last attack of the Greeks. The village was destroyed and Aeneas has burning Tory behind his back. This literal meaning has taken a wider meaning for the Spanisch writer Perez-, who uses this sentence in at least two of his books. The main character indicates with this sentence that everyone has his illusions, hopes dreams which have collapsed. The dreams are still there, but in ruins.

The motive of the theme was that i have drawn Troy burning behind the back of an elephant from the last theme.

The real start of my drawings was first to take a look if the theme was possible.


Very fast the 9-11 drama of New York comes in mind, when drawing skyskrapers as a symbol for the city.
In between i made a transformation of a crane on a postcard sent from Shanghai by a friend:
I liked the suggested existence of the city, by the crane.

The human "back" idea in the theme is also nice to explore.


Eventually i made a drawing about a sort of armored back. I continued making another version with a shadow and a smoking dump at a certain distance.
The next day this smoking dump took on the form of the armored back, in a sort of repetition.

Then i discovered through drawing that the meaning of the sentence can be enlarged again: the ruined illusions are not behind my back, no, i myself, my very nature is formed by these shipwrecked hopes.

This makes the theme turn around, there is no distance left between me and my desillusions.

My elephants

My ideas around:
IST GROSSE LIEBE SO GROSS WIE EIN ELEPHANT?
(Is big love as big as an elephant?)
Getting a theme form another person is never neutral. Another one saying what to do is different from your own stream of thought. Tilman has a big history with elephants, he is very inventive with these poor animals, mainly in small clay figures, maybe he wil show some of these clay elephants?.
The first drawing is getting into the mood.

This theme from Tilman was no difference. At first I saked myself, what am i gonna do with this elephant? But the elephant turned out to be a nice shape. An elephant is very recognizable, even if you draw fingers instead of legs. A lot can be done with an elephant.
The second drawing tries to slice the elephant...


In relation with the "love letter" theme the elephant becames a victim of love. It is shot at with arrows, a reference to Cupido. Also an arm and a head were intermingled with the elephants members, this half man half elephant was not too bad either.



So, if the theme was a question, did my drawings answered anything?
If it was sarcasm, about the existance of love :-) how did my drawings respond?
The elephant as an animal, and as a shape is something strange, very much transformable.
Never thought about the elephant in that way.
As all animals, it probably occupies a unique space in our lower brains, but how this elephant came there, me being from the north, never seen an elephant, real, in its own environment...who knows? Does this indicate visual structures dating from thousands of years ago, still surviving in my brain???

Tilman's choice for a present was the last picture. I was pleased with this. I always wonder why people pick out particular drawings or paintings. Most of the time it is because it refers to memories or accidental associations. In this case it could be the style of the drawing, which can be a bit in the direction of the Tilman drawings.

The second way

La deuxième manière de lire une lettre d'amour...
The second way to read a love letter, this title suggest that there are more ways?
Indeed there are, but these are for later.

Why the second way and not start with the first? Strange enough, the second way produced the third, the fourth and the fifth, but the first way was found after al these stages.
The full five stages of reading a love letter will be shown later. This should be an exhange and the second way was the theme.

The second way of reading is full of uncertainty, even fear. You receive a letter, what can be inside? A text is a full of ideas, suggestions, images, most of the times the content seems to be clear. We read a meaning "into" it. But this magic process might be wrong!
A love letter can be a declaration of war, hidden between the sentences. This is all text, but text is easy.

Now the images. At the moment these are sketches. Not too big. The sketches are worked out, as are the other stages of reading a love letter. These images will be shown later on.

Intro

In mai Tilman Rothermel, Bremen, and bram van Waardenberg, Rotterdam started an exchange.
Each month one of us proposes a theme, and we have a month to do something with that theme.

The first theme was: the second way to read a love letter.
Actually bram van Waardenberg proposed "la deuxieme maniere de lire une lettre d'amour"
Both made drawings around this theme.

The second theme was proposed by Tilman Rothermel:

IST GROSSE LIEBE SO GROSS WIE EIN ELEPHANT?
(Is big love as big as an elephant?)

The third theme was proposed by bram van Waardenberg.
"Troya ardiendo a sus espaldas", a sentence, theme, found in at least two books of the writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte ( EL PINTOR DE BATALLAS ).
The (presumed) meaning of this sentence will be explained in a later blog.

The fourth theme was proposed by Tilman Rothermel:
der Rueckweg, to be translated as: the way back, but probably the meaning of this is already shifted...



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Language plays its part in this excange: bram van Waardenberg is Dutch and has to speak several languages, like german.
Tilman Rothermel is German and speaks several languages too.

Although German is a common language between the two, clearly some interference by the language problem will be unavoidable.

This blog is written in English, because a blog is global and neither Dutch nor German are very global languages at the moment.